The Phenomenology of Cogness

All these silly explanations that diminished the strength of the gesture.
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Everywhere I showed the film, these scenes rose protest. Because it's the worst taboo. It's much less shocking for parents to kill their children themselves, than for someone to destroy money.
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It's a portrait of rich countries.

     —Michael Haneke

I finally watched Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent.

It depicts what neoliberals wish for all the human race: Consumerist Paradise; Neoliberal Heaven; Perfect Order, Complacency, and Safety. It also depicts, simply and quietly, its hellishness, and its ultimate repudiation (though negatively, from within). It's a veritable Documentary on the Unlived Life in extremis, a real existential horror story, not for the faint of soul. You know — our "lives", in Wealth Bondage.

It's where Tati and Gaddis might have gone if they were Austrian and lost every vestige of humor.

Brilliant. Cathartic. Devastating. Human.

Powerful stuff, the place where Art captures/reveals Truth — for those receptive to its message, that is.

(And that brief touch of Berg's Violin Concerto...perfect!)

As I stepped forward into the clearing and addressed one of the workers, I felt the crushing weight of evil insect control forcing my thoughts and feelings into prearranged molds, squeezing my spirit in a soft invisible vice...
     —William S. Burroughs, The Soft Machine

(And I desperately hope our family finds another way to liberation from Wealth Bondage...we're working on it.)